


Agent

by LokiCobalt (orphan_account)



Series: The Captain, The Soldier, The Agent [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Awkward Crush, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Phil Coulson, BAMF Phil Coulson, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Capsicoulucky? Capsicoul/Stucky?, Domestic Avengers, Eventual Romance, I Don't Even Know, Immortality, Intelligent Phil, Love Triangles, Love at First Sight, M/M, Phil Coulson Backstory, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Phil Coulson Needs a Hug, Phil Coulson is having none of your shit, Phil Coulson knows EVERYTHING, Phil Coulson-centric, Phil has No Brain to Mouth Filter, Phil is Kind Of Socially Awkward, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Super Soldier Serum, The Captain The Soldier and The Agent, Threesome - M/M/M, What the fudge is this Pairing Even Called?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 11:06:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2579327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/LokiCobalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Phil Coulson, from his young life, to his life with the avengers, and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agent

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Coulson Theory](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/81800) by This Soul Crushing Beautiful Wonderful Post That Gives Me Hope. 



**-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**

**136KRONOS**

**Agent**

**Chapter 01 – Before S.H.I.E.L.D.**

**-.-.-.-.-.-**

**-.-.-.-.-.-**

**_They say miracles are past._ **

**_~ William Shakespeare_ **

**-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**

Loki’s glow stick of destiny pierces his heart, and Phil Coulson’s life flashes before his eyes.

\--

Phil Coulson was six years old when he first saw Captain America.

He was eight when he broke his arm trying to protect a scrawny boy from a crowd of bullies, despite the fact that they were three times his size.

He was eleven when he lost his family in an accident.

He was fourteen years old when Howard Stark called for volunteers to test the SR-16 serum, and even though he knew they probably wouldn’t pick him, scrawny too young average Phil Coulson, out of all the older better men standing in the cold lab with him, he was still the very first person in line for the test. No one was more surprised than him when they actually picked him. Him! Phillip James Coulson! They picked him out of all the other men there.

He was fourteen, only days later, when he joined S.H.I.E.L.D.

But he’s getting ahead of himself.

The beginning happened one year, three weeks, and four days before he saw Captain America for the first time.

\--

Phillip James Coulson was five years old when he first met the two men who he would later come to know as Steven Grant Rogers and James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes.

He was lost, he was cold, he was wet, and his left knee was scraped and bleeding from crashing his bike, but he needed to get home before his parents became worried about him. So he dragged his busted bike along behind him, and trudged through the chilly rain in the direction he though his house would be.

Phil hadn’t even started going by the name Phil yet; he was still just Phillip, the annoying son of Julie and Robert Coulson. Phil would later in life admit that maybe he was a little crazy to think of himself like this. Phillip, the little boy with the mouth too big for his good, and Phil, the brave strong man who could handle anything. They were the same people, but this was the day he would become Phil.

Anyways, back to the story, Phil was wandering down a dark alleyway, where he came upon a rather disturbing scene.

Two muscled men were beating up a small blonde man, who despite how utterly scrawny he was, was holding his own quite well, like he was used to it. Phil, and later in life he would look back on this moment and realize just how stupid and dangerous the bold move had been, ran up to the bullies and proceeded to bite the biggest of the two on his leg, very hard, which certainly got his attention because Phil’s teeth were small and sharp and drawing blood from his bare leg. Both turned towards him, and the smaller of the two punched him. It hurt very much, but it gave the blonde enough of an opening to knock both of them out with a trashcan lid, just as a tall man dressed in a military uniform came running into the alley, looking worried. He stopped at the scene before him, and burst into laughter.

“You just don’t know when to quit.” The soldier laughed at the blonde man. The man adjusted his clothes and wiped the blood off his face with a wince, which was a futile move considering it was clearly broken, and the blood was pouring like a crimson waterfall.

“Duppy fo’ be dis wittle one was ‘ere to helb be.” The small thin man said, and it took Phil a couple seconds to realize what he was saying, considering the broken nose was making it hard to understand him. The Soldier walked up to him and shifted his nose back into place with a sickening crack. The smaller man didn’t cry out in pain, he just winced and hissed around a mouthful of blood, and then he turned and grinned at Phil, who returned the grin despite a bloodied lip that would need stitches. Phil spit out a mouthful of blood and a tooth that had been knocked out. “’Ey kib, I’m Deve Robers.” He introduced himself.

Phil blinked in confusion and the handsome soldier laughed again. “I’m Sergeant Bucky Barnes.” He says, “And this punk is Steve Rogers.”

“Berk.” Steve mutters fondly.

“Phillip Coulson.” Phil had answered, pocketing his lost tooth.

“It’s nice to meet you Phil.” Bucky had said, and then he turned to Steve. “Steve, we have to go. I told the dames that you were late, and I better not find out you were trying to enlist, again.”

“O’ couwse Buppy, dus gimme a seponb.” He turned to Phil. “Damkws fo ‘ewpin be Phew.”

“It was no problem.” Phil had said dismissively, impressive considering he was five years old. “I don’t like bullies.”

Many long years later Phil would learn that Steve would repeat those very words three weeks later, right before enlisting one last time at Howard Stark’s expo, but at that time that didn’t matter. The soldier and the sickly blonde would walk him home to his flustered parents, who would drive him immediately to the hospital. Phil would get six stitches in his lip, and he would go to sleep to the memories of that day, and wake up to find out the tooth fairy was not in fact a real thing. He probably should have been sadder about that.

That was the day he became Phil, because Phillip was just a kid, and Phil was the brave kid whose new idols were a soldier and a small man who hadn’t known how to stay down.

One day, he would look back, and he would realize this is the moment he fell in love with Steve and Bucky, he just didn’t know it yet.

\--

Phil got into a lot of fights after that night, but not with adults seeing as there were plenty of bullies at his new school. He never, despite what everyone would claim, started the fight. Unless you considered telling them to stop or he’d make them sorry starting a fight. His mother became very frustrated with him, his father simply didn’t care. He said it was character building. Over the course of the next year Phil broke his left arm, his right leg, lost three more teeth, and got twenty-seven stitches on his left hip.

Phil got really good at defending himself. You get hit enough times and you eventually learn how to protect others and yourself without coming home every night covered in bruises and blood.

\--

Phil first saw Captain America when he was six years old on a stage with dancing girls. Though he was taller and bigger and his face was covered, Phil could recognize those blue eyes and that jaw anywhere. He was the first to realize Captain America was Steve Rogers, because Steve Rogers was his idol.

Two days later he got his first Captain America card, and he would start collecting everything he could.

One day he would be just like Captain America, or the sergeant that was his friend.

\--

Three days after that he told his mother that he was going to grow up and marry Captain America.

The reaction he got then was enough that he would never say something like that again.

Someday he would look back and wish someone had remembered to tell him that boys couldn’t love other boys. His life would have been a whole lot easier if someone had.

\--

Phil plays Captain America with the other boys, with the very trashcan lid Steve had used to knock out those bullies the day they met painted like his shield.

\--

Sergeant Bucky Barnes fell into a ravine, the first and only member of The Howling Commandos to lose his life on the battlefield.

Captain America died a hero a few days later, crashing his plane into the ice.

At seven years old, Phil mourned his fallen idols probably just as much as his closest friends would. He cried himself to sleep in his bedroom closet, surrounded by Captain America and Howling Commandos Memorabilia.

Howard Stark started scouring the ocean for Steve, and Phil prays to every higher power he has ever heard of that the serum kept Steve safe.

\--

Phil gets into worse fights, with boys older and bigger than himself, and at eight years old he breaks his arm when he meets a kid who reminds him of Steve.

It isn’t the first time he’s broken a bone or two in a fight, but it is the first time he breaks it so badly the doctors tell him he will never use it again. He longs to prove them wrong, but alas he cannot. His left arm is dead, a useless unmoving gimpy thing attached to his body.

Phil has to reteach himself how to fight, and he has to ignore the bullies and how everyone stares at his dead arm.

\--

Julie Coulson nee Lane, Laurie Coulson, and Robert Coulson die on July 9th, the day after Phil’s eleventh birthday, and it feels like it is his fault.

They were driving to his school to pick him up early, as he’d gotten into yet another fight, and he’d broken his dead left arm again. He hadn’t even felt it break.

He doesn’t remember the accident, but he wakes up seven months later in the hospital to learn that his mother, father, and little sister had died in the crash. They didn’t suffer.

\--

His grandparents would take him in the next day, and Phil would move from Boston to some hot humid city in Georgia for the next three years.

\--

Phil is thirteen when he falls in love for the first time, with a boy who finds his Captain America obsession a bit much, but doesn’t mind kissing him under the stars.

Jack is sweet and older and funny and amazing, and then he is dead.

Phil’s grandparents talk of sending him to a camp to make him better.

\--

Three years after his parent’s death, on Steve Roger’s Birthday, Phil would run away from his abusive grandfather, and find himself standing ten days later at the front of the line, beside many other older more experienced men, ready to be chosen as a test subject for a scientific experiment that would change his life forever.

They had been trying to replicate the super soldier serum for a long time, nearly eight years in fact, and this was the one that looked the most promising.

Phil stands out easily next to all the others. Thin but strong, with one limp smaller arm, and a grin bigger than his face.

Phil stands shivering in the cold for seven hours, answers the questions just like everyone else, does the tests like everyone else, and he is the first one called into the labs. He reminds Howard Stark of Steve. Two others come after him. Just three men. Three.

They strip him down and dress him into too large clothes, and then they have him stand in the chamber. Morphine floods into his veins, making him as numb as his left arm. The chamber closes, and Phil bites down his claustrophobia and focuses on the light coming through the window. He focuses on the fact he will be like Steve if this works out. He will be the new Captain America.

The injection of the SR-16 serum is the single most painful experience of his fourteen years. He doesn’t get bigger. But he does change. His left arm is healed. His reflexes become heightened. He becomes stronger. His moral fiber heightens drastically.

The other two die. And so do the three chosen after they do. It is claimed too dangerous to try again.

The public is told they cannot replicate it.

Phil is the only one injected with SR-16 that survives.

Phil is like Steve.

One of a kind.

\--

Four days later the Tesseract would be found, and Phil would be brought into S.H.I.E.L.D. The youngest agent in history. Directors Howard Stark and Margret “Peggy” Carter smile at him as the welcome him into the fold.


End file.
